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RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD
31
new governess, who put an end to intimacy of all
sorts with the servants.
But I vividly recall the following scene. I was
seven or eight years old by this time. One evening
— it was the vigil of some festival; the Annunciation,
I think—I was running along the corridor, past
Marva Vasilievna’s room. All at once she peered out
of her door and called me. " Båryshnya—hey, miss !
Come in and see what a pretty dough lark I have
baked for you!"1
A semi-darkness reigned in the long corridor, and
there was no one in it except Marya Vasilievna and
myself. As I glanced at her pale face, with its
enormous black eyes, I was suddenly seized with such
terror that, instead of answering, I flew headlong
away from her.
" What, little miss, ’t is evident that you have
entirely ceased to love me; that you despise me!" she
called after me.
It was not so much the words as the tone in which
she uttered them, which struck me; but I did not
halt, and continued to flee. But when I turned into
the schoolroom, and recovered from my terror, I
could not forget her deep, sorrowful voice. Try as I
might, by playfulness and an augmentation of
mischief, to dull that unpleasant, gnawing feeling which
was stirring in my heart, it would not cease. I could
not get Marya Vasilievna out of my head, and, as is
always the case with a person whom you have
offended, she suddenly began to seem to me extremely
charming, and I began to feel drawn to her.
1 The larks are supposed to fly back for the summer at the
beginning of the spring, according to the almanac, and the
shops are full of rolls and bread baked in the form of birds.—
Trans.
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